john blakeborough

Why this site? Quite simply to showcase some of my skills!

This site is responsive and has been handcoded using only HTML & CSS + minimal JS. I have used both Photoshop and Illustrator for the images which are in jpeg and png formats. Whilst the content is better viewed on monitors than hand held devices, the visitor can get a feel for the site on smaller screens.

I am positive that it shows that I have "more than one hat" to wear when it comes to IT, my curriculum and other pages should both expand and confirm this statement.

I have started to recode the site so as to make the addition of new pages in Linux or Windows as painfree as possible.

These 'HowTos' are for my particular mindset and to that end are made as simple as possible. They are also skewed towards working with my Windows systems.

I have installed Serviio on a Centos 7.5 virtual machine as my media server. All my media files are mounted on a Windows Server as I use Winamp and VLC Player. I had a problem getting Winamp playlists to work in Serviio (see my solution here).

The Windows link includes snippets describing the use of DISM, Powershell and Registry Editing to solve some of the problems related to iSCSI, WDS and WSUS to name but a few.

Some of these are workarounds that OK in a home lab environment where the strictures of a production environment do not apply. Again they are written simply so that I will understand them in the future.

During the past few years I have worked as a Freelance Photo Restorer for an historian, Dr. Jo Stanley, FRHistS. Jo is a creative historian who has published numerous books which have featured photos that I have retouched, including her latest book "From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains" published by The History Press and available from Amazon. Her next book to be published in 2017 is "Women and the Royal Navy by IB Tauris/National Museum of the Royal Navy and will contain a number of photos that have been retouched.

You can see a selections of these images (they are 72ppi only) and the state of the originals here. My expertise and passion for images and their reproduction stretches back to my early letterpress print days with zinc photo plates (zincos) and these skills have continued to flourish and develop, via my time at the BBC when I was associated with the Hulton Picture Library (now gettyimages) and throughout the digital evolution.